Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western TechnologyPrinceton University Press, 2012 M09 17 - 360 páginas Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life. Here Robert McC. Adams, renowned anthropologist and Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution, builds a new approach to understanding the circumstances that drive technological change, stressing its episodic, irregular nature. The result is nothing less than a sweeping history of technological transformation from ancient times until now. Rare in antiquity, the bursts of innovations that mark the advance of technology have gradually accelerated and now have become an almost continuous feature of our culture. Repeatedly shifting in direction, this path has been shaped by a host of interacting social, cultural, and scientific forces rather than any deterministic logic. Thus future technological developments, Adams maintains, are predictable only over the very short term. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 27
... specialized, creative process, not readily subject to policy choices of any kind? And ethically, what should be done, and how should the social consensus be sought to shape advancing technology in the service of the unfolding ...
... specialized studies. It extended without clear distinction from the level of everyday life where “rout ine predominates,” although there are “gentle slopes along which the whole mechanism slides,” upward into a realm of economic life ...
... specialized products and processes in the computer industry. Modern microprocessors created niches for memory systems, screen monitors, modems, and other hardware, which in turn begat further niches for new operating system software and ...
... specialized uses provide the fullest record of our antecedents. Less is known of the uses to which many more perishable materials were put, but where local conditions are favorable for preservation there are sometimes tantalizing ...
... specialized toolkits. Human groups found themselves encountering new vulnerabilities and uncertainties in spite of the prevailing advantage of settling in larger, more sedentary social units. Qualitative increases in community size and ...
Contenido
3 | |
36 | |
3 Technology and the New European Society | 69 |
4 England as the Workshop of the World | 104 |
The American System Emerges | 138 |
6 The United States Succeeds to Industrial Leadership | 173 |
7 The Competitive Global System | 212 |
Technological Change in a Borderless World | 253 |
Notes | 279 |
References Cited | 301 |
Index | 327 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western Technology Robert M. Adams Vista previa limitada - 2012 |
Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry Into Western Technology Robert McCormick Adams Sin vista previa disponible - 1996 |